Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Why do men mansplain and manterrupt?


Hey, Bonerman, I don't need your opinion.
All Lara B. Sharp wanted to do last Wednesday was read by the pool. But the title of the book she was reading, paired with the fact that she was a woman in public, made her a victim to some "mansplaining."
  • MANSPLAINING: portmanteau of man and the informal 'splaining (verb "explaining") means "to explain something to someone, characteristically by a man to woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing" (wIki).
Sharp, a New York-based writer whose long Facebook posts often center around social issues, was reading Men Explain Things To MeRebecca Solnit’s best-selling book of essayswhen she says she had an interaction with an older man that honestly seems too good (well, bad) to be true.

Sharp said she typed the entirety of their conversation as it was happening on her Notes app and shared the story with her Facebook followers.

Hey, guys: How NOT to Mansplain Flowchart (Huff Post)
 
White male approaches to mansplain it to me
Excuse me? - Look, I'm a man. I know better. Let me tell you how this works. First thing is...
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“Scene: Pool, balding man, maybe 65 or 70 years old, with blue, bloodshot eyes, drinking from a bottle of Ensure, wearing designer swim trunks, which are half hidden under a huge, extremely brown, beer belly,” she wrote. 
The man, whose name Sharp later revealed to be John, apparently approached her and asked, “What’s that you’re reading, young lady?”

Mansplaining poem: "He Tells Her" by Wendy Cope
 
Sharp -- who’s 47 years old and reminds the man of this multiple times throughout their conversation -- went on to tell him what she was reading and that she’s a writer. Upon seeing the title of the book, Sharp said that John assumed that she was reading “a book about men mentoring women!” Not quite. 
 
Anyone who’s ever read Men Explain Things To Me could have told the gentleman that its most famous essay is about arrogant men and their inability to fathom that women might know as much, if not more, than they do -- but the man had no interest in listening.


Check out Sharp’s entire post below.
 
(TL;DR -- man thinks middle-aged woman needs mentorship from him even though he has no experience in her industry whatsoever, refuses to let her talk, objectifies her repeatedly, and refers to her as “young lady” throughout.)
 
Sharp’s post went viral over the weekend, with more than 39,000 likes and 15,000 shares. She told HuffPost that she is “very surprised, and extremely flattered” by the amount of people with whom her post has resonated.
 
“I’m just a middle-aged, menopausal woman, who writes about her life, on her Facebook page,” she said.

Latina Wonder Woman, help!
To that end, though, she’s “not at all surprised that so many women could relate” to her experience. “We all know John,” she said.
 
One silver lining of her experience was that one of those 15,000 shares was Solnit herself. The two women had a conversation when Solnit shared her post, and it apparently left Sharp pretty starstruck.
 
“I’m a HUGE Fan of your work,” Sharp told Solnit in the comment thread. Solnit responded, “And I just enjoyed yours immensely!” Don’t worry, Lara -- we’d be starstruck, too. More + POST

Related headlines
  • Silence and powerlessness go hand in hand – women's voices must... (theguardian.com, March 8, 2017) Silence and powerlessness go hand in hand – women's voices must be heard... of those allowed to speak and of what can be said and who listens. ....woman or child dared to speak up, that people deigned to believe ...This essay is an extract from Rebecca Solnit's new book, The Mother of All Questions. 
  • Mansplaining, explained: 'Just ask an expert. Who is not a lady... (Jun 6, 2014) Jessica Valenti: Author Solnit admits that even penning a book... we have a mass murderer saying hatred for women is the reason for his ...NSA... 
  • Rebecca Solnit's Faith in Feminist Storytelling (The New Yorker, April 5, 2017) Moira Donegan on “The Mother of All Questions,” Rebecca Solnit's... 
  • How Solnit Became Essential Feminist Reading (newrepublic.com, May 26, 2017) Female readers who endured a lifetime of being... Despite her canny take on gender dynamics, Solnit did not exactly set out to become... 
  • Solnit asks The Mother of all Questions: Is a woman... (nationalpost.com, March 24, 2017) While it seems to go without saying that a woman is more than her womb... Solnit writes, “Monroe can stand in for any woman, all women... 
  • The Problem With Men Explaining Things (motherjones.com, Aug. 20, 2012) Rebecca Solnit...let me just say that my life is well sprinkled with lovely men, with... where women's testimony has no legal standing; so that a woman can't.... After all, Women Strike for Peace was founded by women who were tired of making the coffee and doing the typing... 
  • Solnit: How Women Are Changing the World (thenation.com, March 10, 2017) A woman in Sao Paulo, Brazil, holds up a sign, "The revolution is feminine," during... finally women were in a position to say, “We're not going to take this anymore.... 
  • 80 Books No Woman Should Read (Literary Hub, lithub.com, Nov. 18, 2015) But I did just read Esquire's list of “The 80 Best Books Every Man Should Read” 
  • Do men really talk too much? (latimes.com, March 23, 2017) Derived from an essay by the journalist Solnit... In her 2006 book, The Female Brain, the neuropsychiatrist Louann... The stereotype being that women, not men, have too much say. ...At the beginning of the feminist revolution...
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